Republican Economy vs. Democratic Extravagance, 



SPEECH 




OF MAINE, 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JULY 2, 1868. 



The House being in Committee of the Whole on 
the Deficiency Appropriation bill — 

Mr. BLAINE said: 

Mr. Chairman: \Ve have entered upon a 
new fiscal year, and the last appropriation 
bill to provide for its expenditures has been 
reported and is now before the House. The 
occasion seems a Gt one for a brief survey 
of our financial situation and for a pertinent 
answer to the many misrepresentations so 
industriously set afloat in regard to govern- 
mental expenditures. A very labored attempt 
has been made throughout the country by cer- 
tain parties and partisans to create the impres- 
sion that the expenditures of this Congress are 
on a scale of heedless and reckless extrava- 
gance. I propose to show that such is not the 
fact, but that, on the contrary, the expendi- 
tures are made with far more regard to econ- 
omy than distinguished the last Democratic 
administration that was in power in this coun- 
try. The question is one of figures and not of 
argument, and hence I proceed at once to the 
figures. 

It is important at the outset, to a clear under- 
standing and clear comparison of Government 
expenditures at the present time and the 
period immediately preceding the war, to dis- 
tinguish between those expenditures which 
were the inevitable consequence of the rebel- 
lion, and therefore unavoidable, and those 
which maybe to a certain extent controlled by 
the discretion and the fidelity of Congress. Of 
those expenditures, which are the direct out- 
growth of the rebellion, I count the interest 
on the war debt and the pensions and bounties 
to soldiers and sailors. These are expenditures 
which are not discretionary but are impera- 
tively demanded, unless the nation is prepared 
on the one hand to defraud its creditors, or on 
the other to turn its back on the brave men 
who risked everything that the Republic 
might survive. 

The annual interest on the public debt 



amounts to one hundred and twenty-nine mil- 
lion six hundred and seventy-eight thousand 
seventy-eight dollars and fifty cents. The pen- 
sion-roll for the year will be thirty million three 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and the 
bounties due and payable will require about 
thirty million dollars. These three items, which 
are not discretionary, amount to the huge 
aggregate of nearly one hundred and ninety 
million dollars, well nigh two thirds of our 
total outlay for the fiscal year upon which we 
have just entered. The fact that so large a 
proportion of our expenditure is the result of 
the war, and is unavoidable unless we repudiate 
our obligations to our public Creditors and our 
heroic soldiers, cannot be too often repeated 
or too thoroughly impressed on the public 
mind ; for it is idle to denounce those expend- 
itures as extravagant unless we are prepared 
to withhold them ; and whoever proposes to 
withhold them proposes thereby to put the 
nation at the same time under the doubly dis- 
graceful stigma of repudiation and ingratitude. 
If the Democratic party choose to assume that 
position it is welcome to all the glory of it. 

For the ordinary expenditures of Govern- 
ment for the fiscal year which has just begun 
the appropriations are as follows : 

Executive, legislative, and judicial, embracing all 

Department salaries and expenses $17, 180,000 i 1 1 

For the Army 33,081,013 10 

For the Navy 1, 

West Point Military Academy 

Ccnsul ir and d'plum itli service J 2Ci 

Post Office Department 2 

Indian bureau, treaties, .V.c 2,500.000 00 

Rivers and harbors 4,700.1 

Collecting the revenue 9,969,1 ' 

Sundry civil expenditures connected 

with the various Departments 6,020,000 00 

M iscellaneous expenses of all kinds, in- 
cluding cost of certain public build- 
ings thoughout the country, expenses 
of reconstruction, expense of closing 

up Freedmen's Bureau, &o 9,000,000 00 

Deficiencies of various kinds in the 
different appropriations 2,500,000 00 



Making a total of. 



^ 



Z Ado D 

egg' 

ggg 3 



ETUG 








I differ in some iteme from the recei 

ie honorable chairman of Ways and 
;• 1 think be included in the exp< n 
of this year a deficiency of thirteen million dol- 
lars r - - - 1 1 1 1 i 1 1 lt from the Indian war of 1807; which 
amonnt was appropriated and Bpent last year 

baa do proper connection whatever with 
the expenditnres of the currenl fiscal year. 

be also includes, incorrectly I think, some 

twenty-four million appropriations overlapping 

the year which has closed to the present. 

irrecUy, because this amonnt will be 

I by a similar amount which overlaps from 
this year to the next, aboot the same amount 
going over each year, and this from necessity 
owing to the mode of disbursement. I have 
also made the amount I'm- bounties ten millions 
less than the chairman estimates, because a 
large proportion which he includes in this 
year will necessarily be paid in the ensuing 
year, when it is hoped the whole matter will be 
closed, the last soldier honorably paid off, and 
the Treasury relieved from further obligation in 
that direction. 

Adding together these ordinary expenditures, 
as I have above, the sum total is found to be 

hundred and six million eight hundred and 
eighteen thousand four hundred and forty- 
seven dollars. If Congress can be accused of 
extravagance, the accusation must be made 

I on these- figures, or else abandoned, for 

ther expenditures, as I have already re- 
peated, lie without the pale of congressional 
i or control. A clear estimate of the 
character "t" these expenditures may be gath- 

COmparing them with the outlays in- 
curred under the fast Democratic administra- 
tor example, in L857-68 the same class 
. ws in Buchanan's administration were 

over seventv million dollars in gold, wh( 
the one hundred and Bix million eight hundred 
and eighteen thousand lour hundred and forty- 
[| dollars above named are in paper. It 

be observed, moreover, thai in 1857-58 

the population of this country was under thirty 

millions, whereas to-day it is well nigh forty 

Adding forty per cent, pri 

. to bringtbe expenditures of the two eras 
tot' ndard, and we find the outlays of 

lanan w< re at the rate of over ninety i 
millions in paper to-day. To this add one third 
for increase of population, and we find the 

banan expendil ted to the 

Id amount to one hundred and 
thirty million dollars for the ame item that we 

are paying less than one hundred and seven mil- 
lions for. And in this calculation 1 bave aid 
aboul the increased military and naval 
of the pre eii* dav. which adds immensely 
account in favor of present economy, 
calculation, tab d ■■> tie . general 

-live wl.cn 
.amine details. Tin 1 Army, for 



. cost during the four years of Buchan- 
Iministration, by the official statement 
of the Treasury Department, which I hold in 
my hand, the : gate of $80,307,575 55, 

making an average of well nigh twenty-two 
millions each year in gold. And at that 
time the Army consisted in all of nineteen 
regiments ; so that each regiment cost consid- 
erably over a million each year in gold. The 
Army at present contains sixty regiments, and 
yet the whole appropriation asked for by Gen- 
eral Grant amounts to little more than thirty- 
three millions, a trifle more than half a million 
per regiment each year in paper. In other 
words, the Army under the peace establish- 
ment of a Democratic administration imme- 
diately preceding the war cost per regiment 
largely more in gold than the Army now costs 
per regiment in paper under the peace estab- 
lishment as administered by General Grant. 
The same scale of expenditure indulged in 
under the administration of Buchanan would 
make our present Army cost over seventy mil- 
lions in gold or a hundred millions in paper ; 
and until the latter figure is exceeded the Dem- 
ocratic partisans of Buchanan can have no 
ground to charge that Army expenses are 
extravagant. When we look at the actual 
amount spent for legitimate Army expenses, 
we see good ground for the high compliment 
bestowed by President Johnson when, a few 
months since, he publicly proclaimed "Gen- 
eral Grant's judicious economy as the direct 
cause of saving many millions to the Treas- 
ury.'' With General Grant's election to the 
Presidency and the final pacification of the 
southern States, our Army will at once be 
reduced and the expenditures of the War De- 
partment will be brought to a point so incon- 
siderable as no longer to be felt as a burden to 
the tax-payer. 

The comparison in regard to naval expend- 
iture- at the two periods I have named, are 
equally suggestive and striking. For the four 
years of Buchanan's administration the Navy, 
by the official records, cost fifty-two million six 
hundred and forty-five thousand nine hundred 
and ninety- eight dollars and eighty-nine cents — 
showingan average of more than thirteen mil- 
er annum in gold coin. With a much 
larger Navy, and with the disadvantageof paper 
money ami high prices, our appropriations this 
year ate a trifle under eighteen millions. Tak- 
difference in the size of the Navy at 
id I l:e disparity between gold 
and paper ami we should be authorized, if we 
followed the Buchanan standard of expend! 
iture. in appropriating well nigh forty millions 
for the yen'- Bervice. These facts are cer- 
tainly BUggestive and instructive. 

In our Post Office expenditures, as compared 

with tho teofthe Democratic regime, thediffer- 

. if anything, more striking than in the 






relative expenses of the Army and Navy. Be- 
sidea using up all the postal receipts, the Post 
Office Department for the three last years of 
Buchanan's administration made drafts on the 
Treasury to the amount of over five millions a 
year, in one year running up to nearly seven 
millions. During the whole time the Republic- 
ans have been in power, the drafts on the Treas- 
ury for the support of the postal service have 
not averaged two million dollars per annum, and 
with this moderate expenditure we have been 
enabled to carry on the immense mail service in 
the interior of the continent and to the shores of 
the Pacific, through all our remote Territories 
and sparsely peopled sections, and have also 
been able to maintain a superb line of mail 
steamers from San Francisco to Hong Kong and 
from New York to Rio Janeiro, none of which 
extraordinary enterprises and expenditures 
were levied on the Department during Buchan- 
an's administration. 

These comparisons might be quite indefinitely 
continued, exhibiting in each item the same 
result, and demonstrating with mathematical 
certainty that when we take into account the 
'vast increase of population and the rapid and 
unprecedented development of our country 
during the time the Republican party has been 
in power, and when we take into further account 
the fact that we have been all the while sub- 
jected as a necessity of the war t?o the disad- 
vantage of high prices resulting from paper 
money ; taking, I say, these facts into account, 
I assert and defy contradiction that large as 
our expenditures have necessarily been they 
have yet been on a scale of economy and 
fidelity quite unknown during the last Demo- 
cratic administration that afflicted the coun- 
try. And I assert further, and I call both polit- 
ical friend and foe to the witness stand in 
support of my declaration, that whenever and 
wherever General Grant has been able to con- 
trol governmental expenditure, economy, in- 
tegrity, fidelity, and rigid retrenchment and 
reduction have been the unvarying result. 

Consider further, Mr. Chairman, that while 
the Republican party has been 'providing the 
means for these expenditures, they have been 
at the same time effecting immense reductions 
in the public debt and continually and largely 
reducing taxation. Within the three years 
that have elapsed since the war closed and the 
Army was mustered out, we have reduced the 
public debt between two and three hundred 
million dollars, and at each session of Congress, 
while this reduction of the debt was going 
on, we have taken off millionsupon millions of 
taxation from the productive industry of the 
tuition. At the first session of the Thirty- 
Nintn Congress, the first that convened after 
the close of the war, taxes were removed that 



had the preceding year yielded a revenue of 
sixty million dollars, and at. the second session 

of tin- same Congress forty-one millions more 
of taxes were promptly repealed. The Fortieth 
Congress has not been behind the Thirty-Nir] b 
in this respect, for we have already repeal) d 
taxes that last year gave us a revenue of niu 
millions. And to-day the taxes of the Federal 
Government are so wisely adjusted, and col- 
lected from such few sources that no man feels 
them burdensome, oppressive, or exacting. 
Demagogues may misrepresent and partisans 
may assail, but the people know and feel that 
to-day the taxes levied by the Federal Govern- 
ment arc not an oppression to the individual 
and not a hinderance to the development of the 
industrial resources of the land. 

The history of the Republican party, Mr. 
Chairman, is indeed a proud record. Inherit- 
ing a bankrupt Treasury, a dishonored credit, 
and a gigantic rebellion from the traitorous 
Administration which preceded their advent to 
power in 18G1, the Republicans heroically and 
successfully grappled with and conquered all 
these obstacles to the life and progress of the 
nation. They replenished the Treasury ; they. 
redeemed our credit ; they subdued the mightiest 
rebellion that ever confronted civil power since 
Governments were instituted among men ; 
they struck the shackles from four millions of 
human beings, and gave them every civil riglu 
under the Constitution and laws. And while 
accomplishing these herculean tasks, the Re- 
publican party administered the Government 
so wisely that prosperity has been all the time 
abroad in the land ; great business enterprises 
have been undertaken and successfully prose- 
cuted ; factories have been built ; the forest 
subdued; farms brought under cultivation; 
navigable rivers improved ; thousands of miles 
of railway constructed ; the continent spanned 
by telegraph wires : the two oceans well nigh 
connected by a road of iron ; the emigrant pro- 
tected on the remotest frontier ; Territories 
carved out of the wilderness domain: and new 
States of promise and power added to the 
national Union. 

What other party in the history of this coun- 
try ever confronted such difficulties? What 
other party ever gained such victories ? But 
great as its achievements have been, its work is 
not yet finished. Out of the fierce conflicts 
of the recent past, conflicts indeed still ragin_ r , 
order and harmony, conciliation and friendship, 
are yet to be evoked ; not, indeed, by unwise 
concession and timid compromise, but by that 
firm policy which is based on Bight, and under 
the leadership of one, who, so terribly earnest in 
war, is yet to-day the embodiment of peace, the 
conservator of public justice, the hope of the 
loyal millions ! 



mor 



Seymour's Misstatemeots in regard to Army Expenses. 



ntatives, ./.■ tie 27, 1868, Mr. Blaine, of Maine, made the fol- 
.,'..< on a misstatement made by Governor Seymour, of New York, in 
i boper Institute sp< - ch : 



oopei 

• r. I desire bo call attention to a 
nl made bj Governor Seymour in his 
... >b a1 the C -1 in the 

city of New Xork. In arraigning thr Repub- 
lican party tor exti he makes the fol- 
1 iwing declaration, as reported in the New 
. World, which 1 hold in my hand : 

■ the war closed in 1865 the Government has 

-. in addition to its payment on 
principal or interest of public debt, more than one 
; million dollars. Of this sum there I 
. i.rht hundn pent on th 

nd foi military purposes. This is nearly 
oal di bt. IMs was Bpent in 

The charge thus brought by Governor Sey- 
mour is that in the three years that have trans- 
our Army and 
Navy ha* i ight hundred million dol- 

. or at the rate of nearly two hundred and 
ity millions per annum in time of pro- 
foan , The batement is cunningly 

■ th I videnl purpose of misleading 

iblic mind, for while it is quite true that 

military and naval i Bince the 

i « bat i b en eighl hundred mil- 
is absolutely untrue that they 
, hundred and Beventy millions 
inum. 
. the war closed by the sum 
<-\i of April, 1865, the armies of the 
Union bore the names of nearly a million men 
be rolls, and our Navy, in its vast and 
ed <luty of b] bhree thou- 

• i coa '■ had nearly hve hundred 
.:, ei a corresponding num- 

men. The first result of Grant's mag- 
nificent Beries of vie 1 final triumph 
on was to muster out these count- 
■ which had borne our i tandard «i it h 
.1 and on thesea. Mont 
re than half the Army ; the 

cU pay. Wi i 
i illi of prize money bow 

• and almost incalculable amount 

le 1 to be provided for these purposes must 

be I and thanks to the patriotism 

i of our people it was had at 

. 'id mornin : visited the Treasury 

ut. and by the official statements 

b I bola in my hand it appears ths 

for the Army and Navy fi 

;••. (bur daj following 
iir,r. ~*~ A * n ■»* hun- 



9 SI9 99Z. CI0 



dred and twenty-five million dollars. Hence it 
will be seen that more than three fourths of the 
eight hundred millions so triumphantly paraded 
by Governor Seymour as the War and Navy 
uses of the past three years were really 
disbursed almost in one sum at the close of 
hostilities as the necessary expenses of muster- 
mt our enormous military and naval forces. 
pply this vast sum the current receipts of 
the Government were consumed, and the people 
directly advanced live hundred and thirty mil- 
lions by subscribing that amount to the ever- 
memorable seven-thirty loan. 

Do Governor Seymour and his friends find 

fault with the expenditure thus incurred in 

sring out the Army? Do they begrudge 

the soldiers their back pay and bounty and 

ailors their hard-earned wages and their 

money? If not, let them cease to attack ~- 

the Republicans for promptly discharging the 

honorary debts of the Republic, for thus gladly 

paying the men who risked their lives to save 

the life of the nation. 

Six hundred and twenty-five millions of Gov- 
ernor Seymour's eight hundred millions bei 
thus expended in mustering outthe volant, 
his own figures show that the current and legit- 
imate expense of both Army and Navy for the 
three years of peace have been but one 
hundred and seventy-five million dollars, or a 
little more than fifty-eight millions per annum 
for both branches of the service. The Gover- 
nor's figures thus reduced are not far from the 
truth, and t hey show a degree of economy quite 
unknown in Democratic times. Take the year 
1858, for example, in the administration of Mr. 
Buchanan, and we find that the exp 
the Navj re fourteen millions, and ofVI 
Arinv nearly twenty-six millions — for the two 
well nigh forty millions— and that was in gold, 

and With an Army and Navy of loss numb 

than have been deemed necessary for the 
jecurity of the public peace during the ■ 

. Takingthedifferenceintheamount 

nd the fact that the expenditure 

Mr. Buchanan's administration were in com 

expenditure in papi r, it will 

n that the result shows Btrongly in favor 

of the economy of Army expenses as adminis- 

by General Grant The Am. 

-: much less per regiment m paper 
il co I per regiment in gold under the 
Democratic Administration. Bo much ior 
rnor Seymour's figures. 



«^>nwm -in xxHxnn 



